Desperation Reef

“Never make a threat. We want to open a restaurant in Laguna. Chinese seafood and fish. All fresh. A modern place, hip. More hip than Barrel. More now.”

“Good luck.”

“Laguna has money. It needs good restaurant,” says Polo.

“Sure. Laguna can use another good restaurant. Gentlemen — please go slow on your exit, would you? I’m heading home.”

Jen digs in her paddle for an eastward tack and starts off through the choppy water.

Then, something really bugging her, she angrily swings her board around to face Dragon.

“Leave my son alone.”

“Leave my daughter alone!” yells the King. “You make Casey Stonebreaker follow my orders!”

“He won’t,” Jen yells back. “He’s brave and good and always does what’s right.” Admittedly, though, Casey can be a bit self-righteous. For twenty-four.

“But maybe he stupid, too,” says Polo. “Makes trouble for everyone for no good reason.”

“Mutilating wild animals is a good reason for trouble,” she says.

“You kill fish for your restaurant,” says the King. “Big money. Same thing.”

“We use the whole fish. Sashimi, soup, sauces — everything but the skin and guts. The gulls get those.”

“You make Casey take down the videos,” says the King. “All platforms. Don’t let him be a fool. Maybe good things happen.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she says, turning away again and paddling for shore.

Well, maybe I am, she admits, with regards to Casey and his idealism. He’s no match for shark-finning pirates on the high seas. Right now her knees feel brittle and her heart beats hard.

She’s plenty angry, too.

She isn’t afraid of bad men, threats, heights, sharks, fists, guns, car accidents, wildfires, or viruses. In fact, Jen Stonebreaker is afraid of only one thing: the big waves she’ll be riding at Mavericks, and hauling Casey — and maybe Brock — into. Dragging her beloved sons into the waves that killed their dad.

By this notion she is privately, unabashedly terrified.

8

The next morning Casey hooks a 102-pound bluefin tuna — the largest and most delicious tuna in the world — on Desperation Reef. The reef is a not-so-secret hot spot for sportfishermen, and the prized bluefin hit it hard in summer and fall. Just a few hundred yards outside Desperation Reef lies San Clemente Island, owned by the Navy and used as an amphibious training base and bomb/rocket/missile proving ground. Not even the wild goats are welcome. Occasionally, Navy patrol boats will stop Casey, board Moondance, check his bait and refrigerated holds. They’re pretty cool guys, Casey has found, and some of them recognize him from the surf journals and the many YouTube videos of him riding gigantic waves around the world.

Today, this tuna fights him so long and hard, dragging Moondance across the heavy chop, that the anglers on the nearby charter, Buenisima, cheer and hoot as Casey finally completes his gaff-free landing of the beautiful, scintillating silver-blue missile.

Paws on the gunwale, Mae barks for most of this grueling forty-minute battle, the tuna sounding and taking line off Casey’s Penn reel in heated screams. She only barks at big fish.

Breathing heavily, Casey finally tail-ropes the tuna to a stern cleat, and sets the engine low to drag the fish slowly east, cooling the tuna’s internal temperature after its hard battle. Casey watches it through dark blue water shot with pipes of sunlight, the fish losing strength, gills slowing. Casey knows something of how it feels, having held the very last of his breath on long hold-downs by huge waves.

The swell is too heavy and the chop too high for cleaning the fish at sea, so Casey lowers his catch to the ice blocks in the hold, and hightails Moondance to Oceanside Harbor.

Where, an hour and fifteen minutes later, he ties off his boat and clomps up the launch ramp, leaving Mae to guard the catch, per usual. Casey gets his keys from the waders’ pouch, then climbs into the truck and backs the trailer down the ramp.

The truck cab is warm in the early afternoon sun, and Casey feels the post-adrenal peace that comes from a big fish well hunted, well fought, and well caught. He feels dreamy but clear-headed. He still understands that he’s killed this animal for nourishment and profit. And he knows that he will someday be killed against his will as well. He doesn’t romanticize himself enough to believe that he’ll end up killed and eaten by something further up the food chain. This fish has become a victim in a way that he — the human Stonebreaker — will almost certainly not be. Which in Casey’s mind means he and the fish were put on Earth for different purposes. He doesn’t believe that the fish has a soul like his. A different kind of soul — maybe. What they do have in common though, is creation by, and eventually absorption by, the same God. Thus, sharing relation, even brotherhood.